Session Information
23 SES 02 A, Collective Actions, Alliances and Resistance of Children, Young People and Teachers (Part 2)
Symposium, continued from 23 SES 01 A
Time:
2009-09-28
11:15-12:45
Room:
HG, HS 28
Chair:
Gaby Weiner
Discussant:
Lyn Yates
Contribution
This paper uses ethnographic research from a Swedish upper secondary school to examine how suborder and superior (Gramsci, 1967) work in everyday life according to conditions and possibilities of subjects, schedules, locations etc. In the early 1990s the Swedish upper secondary school changed radically by decentralisation and the so called free choice reforms were carried out. The new structural reform resulted in 16 course-based programmes and a special individual programme. The municipalities were obliged to offer all 16-19-year-olds an education in one of the national programmes or in the individual programme. The individual programme should meet the individual needs of students who for different reasons are not ready to attend one of the three year programmes. Qualifications for admission to upper secondary school changed in 1998 and now the students have to have passed their exams in Swedish, English and Mathematics. One common reason why students end up in the individual programme is that students lack grades in these subjects. The aim of the programme is to be compensatory and help students qualify for the national programmes (Swedish National Board of Education, 2006). Despite school law which says that all students on the individual programme have the right to full-time studies our ethnographic study shows something quite different. The paper describes the cultural production in one individual programme and links it to the cultural and social reproduction. The individual programme excludes students from other programmes and gets less recourse compared with the national programmes. Perhaps the most striking result is that the students and even some teachers identified the students as “loosers”. But we can also identify attempts from some of the teachers to encourage students (and their parents) to see through structures, demand more resources and make the students conscious of their own position in the conditions of production. This corresponds to a more political education for social transformation (Allman, 1999).
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.